He shrugs without me saying a word. “I can't. As soon as I shut my eyes, I start thinking about the bonds in history. I keep having nightmares that don't feel like my own. It feels like… forget it.”
My eyes narrow. “If the last six months of learning about your bond, not to mention North’s, has taught me anything, it's that any little gut feeling you have, we need to listen to, Nox.”
“It feels like they’re my bond’s memories, but I was there too. They're not my own… but I was there. I don't know how to explain this without sounding like I'm going insane.”
I blow out a breath and run my hands through my hair, pulling it up to tie into a low ponytail to get it away from my face. I should just cut it off, but some part of me likes the normality of my hair, the one active protest I ever had against my father and his militant ways. The only one I kept into adulthood after I had a house of my own, a job of my own, and a Bonded Group of my own.
Everything I could ever want, all of my own.
“Have you spoken to North about it?”
His brows furrow and he shrugs. “I mentioned it, but he's had so much bullshit going on with the council that he's barely given it a look. I spoke to Oleander, though. She's not having the nightmares, but she recognizes the deaths like I do.”
When the elevator stops and the doors begin to open, Nox presses the stop button before they get very far.
This isn’t good.
“You should read them.”
I scowl at him. “What's that supposed to mean?”
“It means that Gabe’s dragon was in history. It’s shown up once, but I've also found a bond that can get into people's minds. They call that a fortune teller, because it always knew the answers to things before people had spoken. The same black eyes, but with your abilities. You should read the list as well.”
“My bond doesn't have a voice. It doesn't have anything other than feelings. The same as every other bond but yours.”
Nox nods and then he turns to me, fixing me with a look. His eyes are dark on my own, that same dark blue hue they have when he is fixated on something.
“I don't think Oleander’s bond made Gabe’s bond into a god. I don't think that's possible. I think it woke it up.”
Sawyer needs to leave his den a little more often.
You’d think now that he's found his own Central Bonded, he would have some motivation to go home and spend some time with her. Judging from the state of his den, he has not been getting out much.
The air is stale in the room, and there's a mountain of energy drinks scattered across his desk, half drunk and discarded for a fresh one, purely because he can't focus for long enough to drink one while it’s still cold.
“What have you found?” I say, trying not to sound disgusted at the state of the place, but it's hard. I’m not a neat freak like North is, but I definitely don’t live like a fucking pig. This place is just plain disgusting.
“I didn't find it so much as I was sent it, and by that, I mean Atlas.”
I roll my eyes because anything to do with Atlas is a very quick trigger for Nox.
Soul-bonding with Oli had done exactly nothing to improve their relationship, and I almost regret bringing him with me.
Sawyer sees my pain and shoots Nox a look. “That phone we confiscated off of him? Yeah, his mom still texts it now and then. I think she knows that he doesn't have it anymore, so it's probably more of a reflex or maybe she's hoping that someday he'll get it back. Whatever it is, her latest texts were enough to catch my attention.”
Nox isn't so subtle about sneering at the mess of the place, but he walks over to the desk to read the text that Sawyer has pulled up on his system. “What the fuck does that mean?”
I step forward and read it for myself.
Time is almost up, Atlas. I want you to know that everything that I did was for you. This will make me a traitor to the cause, but I am your mother first and a Bassinger second. I always will be. Try to get your sister out if you can. This life was never meant for her. Her mother was too weak to protect her like I protected you. I hope you're happy with your Bonded. I love you.
I read the message twice before I shoot Nox a look, but he’s glaring at the screen just as hard as I am, as though he’s trying to find some secret message hidden between the words.
“That's not all,” Sawyer says. “She also sent through a file. It was encrypted but easy enough to get into.”
I already know it's big, because Sawyer isn't just saying it. There's lots of pomp and drama, the way there always is when it's something big. He clicks on the screen a few times and brings up the file before leaning back in his chair and leaving us to read it.
“Holy fuck.”
“That's all the locations,” Nox says.
I reply, “All of the planned locations—”
Sawyer cuts in before we can continue. “It's all the locations, the planned locations, where people are allocated, what security they have; it's everything. It's every goddamn thing. It's the key to taking out the Resistance, and Atlas’ mom has just handed it over to us, purely to keep her son alive.”
I scowl at the screen because there's absolutely no way it's not a trap.
When I say as much, Nox cocks his head at me. “You'd think that, but this is also the woman who protected Oleander and kept her hidden from everyone just to be sure that her son couldn't be used as a pawn in her Bond’s games.”
I look back at the screen, memorizing places and names as quickly as I can, as though merely by reading it, the screen is going to self-destruct and we're going to lose it all.
We can’t just take this ‘gift’ at face value.
I point at one of the glowing dots on the screen. “This camp is close enough to a town that I could verify it pretty easily.”
Nox says, his patience slipping, “We could easily check all of these locations by sending Kieran to the ones that don't have Locators protecting them. Which we now know, thanks to these lists.”
“We can't send Kieran,” I say, and Nox rolls his eyes at me.
“Just because he's our friend—”
I interrupt him. “I’m not saying it because he's our friend. I'm saying it because he's the strongest Transporter. We have the only one who can transport our entire Bonded Group and TacTeam at the same time. We can't risk him over a recon. We have others we can send in his stead just to scout it and see whether it's true or not.”
“And if it is true?” Sawyer asks, his eyebrows reaching his hairline.
I shouldn't say anything to him, not by official Tac procedures anyway, but he's the closest thing we have to family, the one we've chosen instead of the one that we were born into, some of whom had happily stood in front of a room full of unfriendly faces to attempt to tear us down.
“Then we make a plan, and we wipe the Resistance off of the face of the earth before they come after our families again. We get rid of them all.”
My mind keeps slipping back to Nox's words, but I can't find a way to rationalize any of it.
I usually leave the research and history parts of this job to Nox and North. Not only are they both more well-read than I am on the subjects, but they enjoy it. Talking through the tiny minutia of our society and how we've come to be is like crack to them both. While I am perfectly capable of joining in if I choose to, it's not really my forte.